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Young people are at the center of many program agendas about reproductive health and HIV. The urgency to address risk factors has led many organizations to rush into program activities, often without regard for whether those activities are supported by solid, evidence-based findings.

So what works and what does not? These Topic pages present overview information and recommend guides and other resources for key programmatic areas.

We welcome input from those working in the field to refine and update these pages. If you have suggestions for the topics shown or for new topic pages, please contact us.

Approximately 14 million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 give birth each year, and the actual rate of pregnancy among this age group is likely to be even higher. An estimated 40% of young unmarried women have experienced an unwanted or unintended pregnancy. Many pregnancies among adolescents are uncounted because pregnancies among this age group are often not carried to term. In developing countries, approximately one-third of adolescent girls give birth before they are 20 years old and between 2.2 and 4 million adolescent girls undergo unsafe abortions each year.

One in eight people in the world today is female and between the ages of 10 and 24. During adolescence, health and social behaviors are established for life; the decisions a girl makes during this period and the situations she faces will have long-term consequences for her sexual and reproductive health.

Multiple and concurrent partnerships (MCPs) occur when a person is involved in more than one sexual partnership at the same time. These concurrent partnerships enable HIV to spread quickly within large sexual networks. Several case studies have demonstrated that even modest reductions in MCPs may substantially reduce HIV transmission in a community.